Calling all second-year undergraduates

Work experience: but not as you know it

We’re looking for second-year undergraduates to come to our two-day Word Experience on Thursday 10th and Friday 11th April 2014.

What’s ‘Word Experience’?

We get a lot of requests from people wanting to come on work experience. But we’ve always felt work experience was pretty unsatisfactory all round: we can’t help many people in a year; you inevitably end up doing quite a bit of boring stuff; and, if we’re honest, it’s a lot of work to do well. (And who wants to do it badly?)

So we cooked up Word Experience: every year, we gather about 20 people together for two days of creativity, workshops and fun stuff. Along the way we’ll talk to you about how you can make a career out of writing for business, show you how our agency works, and some Writer folk will tell you their own stories of how they got into business writing. We might even get you working with us on a live project.

Plus, we usually pick two people from each year to come back and join us for a short paid internship. (And some of those have ended up working here.)

Here’s what previous Word Experiencers have said

‘I loved every minute of it! The look into the world of business writing was insightful and I’ve come away with two realisations: A) You can make a living from words, without becoming a journalist, and B) I actually have a bankable skill set.’

‘Hands-on activities included the sorts of word games that seem like harmless entertainment while you do them, but come loaded with Karate Kid-style moments of realisation that detonate later on. The other day I was struggling over an email to a tutor, then something clicked and (wax on, wax off) I realised I could cut out half the words to make it cleaner and clearer. Who knew writing poems about Ryan Gosling and Tweets for a bike charity could lead to that?’

Keep reading if:

You already write for your course

Maybe you study English, journalism or creative writing. Or maybe you just write a lot of essays.

You write in your spare time too

You might write for your student paper, a blog, or fiction. It doesn’t matter as long as you write.

You’re a bit of a word geek

You have a tendency to get excited or properly riled up by all kinds of writing. From tube ads to tubes of toothpaste, Booker Prize winners to Charlie Brooker.

Yes that’s me. What do I need to do?

Send us 300 words telling us why we should pick you (and a way for us to get in touch with you) to pickme@thewriter.com. Make sure ‘Word Experience’ and your name are in the subject line. And get it to us by Friday 7th March 2014.